The sinners all bow : two authors, one murder, and the real Hester Prynne
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sarah Maria Cornell was a Fall River, Massachusetts mill worker whose corpse was found hanging from a stackpole on the farm of John Durfee in nearby Tiverton, Rhode Island on December 21, 1832. Her death was at first thought to be a suicide. After an autopsy, it was discovered she was pregnant. Methodist minister Ephraim K. Avery would be suspected of her pregnancy and tried for her murder, but was acquitted. Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Williams examined the case and wrote what many claim is the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The case and Williams' book became a sensation--one that divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. In The Sinners All Bow, true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson, using modern investigative advancements, travels back in time to 19th century small town America to examine the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Along the way she also examines how society decides who is the "right kind" of crime victim and how America's long history of religious evangelism may have clouded the facts both in the 1830s and today.